[Log Entry: March 4st, 711 A.S. | Omega-5, Golf-5 sector]
Commanding Officer: Capt. Klaus von Tanner | E.V. Morgenstern
Classification: Emergency Operations Log, Survival Protocol Theta-5
"After nearly a full year of decay and inertia, the Morgenstern has moved under her own power. It wasn’t graceful, and it certainly wasn’t clean—but it worked. Against every probability, the engines responded to the synchronised firing sequence timed with the neutron star’s magnetic pulse emissions. Every ignition was plotted in advance, matched to the star’s rhythm like a warship dancing to a cosmic metronome. An insane idea, perhaps, but today insanity bore fruit."
"We began the burn sequence at 0330 ship time. Each burst of forward motion brought with it not just velocity, but risk: overtaxed capacitors, hull stress, exposure. Engineering managed each impulse like a surgical procedure—timing, restraint, recalibration. Between pulses, we drifted, silent and dark, letting the star’s chaotic presence mask our signature."
"The first few hours were quiet. Too quiet. We kept all systems but propulsion and life support on low power. No navigation lights. No active scans. Passive sensors only. Every flicker on the display had to be double-checked. We feared detection by Corsair scouts, feared the star’s flares, feared the structural groans that echoed through the ship."
"By the sixth pulse cycle, the ship’s forward momentum stabilized enough to initiate limited course corrections. The magnetic tethers barely held. Several relays burned out. We lost tertiary coolant to Deck 4 and nearly fried the inertial dampeners, but the vector held.
"No contacts. No signals. Just the groan of our hull, the rhythm of the star, and the uncanny silence of a dead system watching us leave. It took two full days."
"Two days of crawling through Omega-41, slipping between radiation bursts and debris fields, waiting for death to notice. I do not exaggerate when I say every hour felt like a farewell. Yet somehow, we made it."
"The jump hole—our only hope—was there, precisely where that Zoner scout told us to search almost 4 months ago. It shimmered with the characteristic gravitational eddies of a stable transit node. Uncharted. Unlabelled. Untested."
"I paused. No scan could tell me what lay beyond. But the crew knew as well as I did: there was no turning back. There was no more fuel to wait, and no more time to hope. So I gave the order."
T"he Morgenstern slipped into the rift with a grace I did not know she had left. Gravity warped. Sound vanished. Instruments surged and then flatlined. There was a moment—perhaps only a second—when all sensation left us. We were nowhere. And then… we weren’t. We emerged into the silence that the locals have christened as Omega-5 ."
"No known charts. No beacons. No hostiles. Just a broad expanse of rocky asteroids—dense, but navigable. The asteroids are more massive than Omega-41’s, and less radioactive. To our left, I can see the pale swirl of what may be the Barrier Cloud. To our right, the orange glow of the Walker Nebula dances at the edge of the system. The stars here shine faint and old, but the sky is clear. No flares. No neutron star. No imminent death. Just cold, stable emptiness.
I did not speak. I simply stared.
At my side, Lieutenant Gerlach leaned back in his seat, exhaled as though he’d been holding his breath for a year, and murmured, “We made it.” His voice cracked halfway through. Behind us, Rehfeld, ever composed, whispered “Gott im Himmel,” as if only now realizing she was still capable of awe. From the engineering console, I heard what I think was Chief Bartz laughing—short, breathless, the kind of laugh that rises when the mind doesn’t yet know whether it should weep or sing.
I gave them a moment. Gave myself a moment and than said, “Pass the word. All decks. General assembly in the main hall.”
Schmidt paused the log, none of them moved. The soft hum of the archive terminal was the only sound in the room.
Neer blinked. “They made it,” he said quietly. Like he couldn’t quite believe the words.
Belck was staring at the screen, slack-jawed. “Omega-5. With that wreck of a ship. Through two days of synchronized burns. And it worked.”
Schmidt leaned forward, arms braced on the console. “They had nothing. And they still got out.” There was a long silence. And then, he added, softly: “I’ve flown through Omega-41. A couple of tume. In a fully-shielded Peregrine with escort. I didn’t sleep for a week after.”
“They were in there for a year,” Belck murmured.
Neer looked at them both, then back at the screen. “No stars charts. No sensors. No help. Just a mad plan and a neutron star for cover.”
Schmidt exhaled, as if letting go of something he'd been holding without noticing. “And they pulled it off.”
They stood there a little longer—quiet, still, humbled. As if they'd just watched someone win a war with tape and sheer nerve. Then, pressed play again.
"The hall was never designed to hold so many at once. It was originally intended for rotation-based briefings, off-duty seminars, and recreation schedules—most of which have long since become theoretical. And yet, despite cramped quarters, malfunctioning ventilation, and a general absence of decorum, every soul who could move attended."
"I took position near the center dais. My coat still bore the creases of the command chair, my voice still dry from days of filtered air and rationed water. I raised one hand to signal silence. Surprisingly, it worked."
“My friends,” I began. "the extraction maneuvre was succesful"
"I had intended to continue—to speak of endurance, of duty, of the memory of those we had lost, and of the uncertain but open path now before us. I did not get the chance."
"The crew erupted."
"Cheering, laughter, uncontrolled celebration. A bottle of something that had no place on a military vessel was unsealed with a sound I shall never forget. Some wept. Some embraced. I heard, for a fleeting moment, the first four notes of the Rheinland anthem attempted on a harmonica—before the performer dissolved into laughter alongside the others."
"It was not discipline. It was not order. It was not the Navy. But it was life. And I stood there, in the middle of it all, and said nothing more, my words forgotten."
"It is not often that an officer is glad to be ignored. Tonight, I was."
"Let the record show, to whomever at home will review this: the crew of the Morgenstern made it out of Omega-41. They survived one year in radiation and silence, and they lived to see open sky again. No formal speech could better honor that than the sound of their joy."
"Tomorrow, we will resume protocol. We will chart this place, consider long-range comms and plot a course to the nearest jump-hole to civilization. But tonight belongs to them."
"They are no longer just my crew. They are my comrades."
END LOG.
The log ended. Another click. Another breath held and then released. The three men sat in the now-familiar glow of the bridge, the past playing out like echoes between the walls.
Silence hung for a moment longer on the bridge. Then Albert leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand down his face. “Well,” he said, voice low but steady, “after all that... it’d be a damn shame not to join the celebrations, wouldn’t it?”
Schmidt turned to him, one eyebrow raised.
Neer was already reaching down into the side pouch of his satchel. From within, wrapped in an ancient sock and absolutely no justification, he produced a glass bottle, squat and frost-clear. He held it up with an air of casual defiance.
Hans blinked. “Is that—?”
“Schnapps,” Neer said, shrugging his shoulders. “Brought it in case we met ghosts. Thought it’d be rude to arrive empty-handed. Figured, worst case, we’d all get spooked and need a drink.”
Schmidt laughed. A genuine one. “You absolute idiot. You’ve been carrying that this whole time?”
“I was going to save it for the end of the story,” Neer admitted, holding it up so the light hit the label just right. “But... maybe this is the end. Or at least the chapter break.”
Hans reached out, gently taking the bottle, and turned it in his hand. “For Von Tanner. And for the crew.”
Schmidt nodded. “They didn’t get to toast when they launched. But they damn well earned one when they arrived.”
Neer unscrewed the cap, and the sharp tang of alcohol and apricots cut through the recycled air.
They each raised an imaginary glass.
“To the Morgenstern,” Schmidt said.
“To surviving going to the hell and back” Hans added.
“To offering schnapps to ghosts,” Neer grinned.
And as the three of them stood there—part archaeologists, part witnesses, and now, in some strange way, part heirs—they drank—quietly, reverently, absurdly. One century too late, but right on time.